I promise this will be the final word on this years dry bean harvest.  The final threshing of the beans were on my canning/preserving list, although I didn’t mention it.  I like to add things to my list that I can cross off – that way I think I have accomplished something!

A sunny day in late November was my chance to bail and head to the barn, and throw open the south-facing doors.  Applesauce and sauerkraut were far from my mind – again.

T bag and bean bags

Too hot for winter coats

My crew consisted of the usual velcro pups.  One front and center, and one in the shade.

The Ruminatrix

Also the rear bagger was present.  It’s always nice to have company to talk to while you work

That’s what 18 pounds of beans look like.  I did the plastic feed bag trick on these too.  On a food safety note:  I bought this old baby bathtub at an estate sale, there is no telling how many babies’ behinds have graced it

All this chaff got me to thinking about a simple way to get rid of the chaff.

Loading the poor man’s fanning mill.  And presto, it works!

The final tally:  35 1/2 pounds from 200 row feet. 

Dry beans are a touchy crop in our area, but these are heirloom seeds handed down to me so I feel obligated to keep them going.  Definitely not a money-maker, but a good addition to the variety of food we can grow for our own table. 

By pulling the plants and allowing them to finish drying, and then threshing by hand, I was able to minimize the waste.   About half dried before the fall rains, and I could have harvested the remaining beans as fresh shell beans, but that would have defeated my purpose of having  one more vegetable that I could store as is.  Fresh shell beans would require canning or freezing – dry beans can be stored indefinitely.

A farmer friend commented earlier about his yield in a similar growing situation.

Josh Volk

Great post, as always. Those look a lot like the Boston Favorites we grew this year, our highest yielding dry bean. I’m surprised that you don’t get dry pods earlier. We’re also up at 1000′, although our South aspect might help, and the lack of cool air draining from higher (I suppose we’re also on the West Side which is a bit of a banana belt). We ended up pulling most plants, which were fully dry, in August.Josh’s experiment shows how important knowing your microclimate is in gardening.  Our location is usually lumped into USDA zone 8, which really doesn’t help a vegetable gardener at all – that would suggest we could grow warm weather crops easier than someone in a zone 5 garden.  But that is not true, while Western Oregon has mild, dry summers, we do not have very many warm nights in the summer.  That is what counts, not how cold it is in January. 

While Josh’s venture is commercial, ours is home scale,  we both have the same objectives.  Growing a good amount of food using dryland and low-input methods is on our minds.

My observation on these beans this summer was that I had a huge difference in yield from one row to the other, due to soil conditions.  I did not keep the rows separate when harvesting because of weather constraints, but my best estimate would be that the poorer row produced maybe 12 pounds of the total, with the remaining 23 pounds coming from the second row.  For the most part the plants in the first row produced approximately 10 – 12 pods per plant, they were more stressed during the hot weather and therefore dried their pods down faster.  On the other hand, the plants in the second row had 25 to 30 pods per plant and were better able to handle the hot, dry conditions better, however they did not get in any hurry to dry.  From a nutritional standpoint, I would have to say the stressed plants and resulting beans would not be as strong in nutrients as the other beans that did continue to grow and never really showed any signs of stress.

That is where we sometimes lose ourselves in the business of food.  If I am tunnel visioned and my only objective is to get beans dry, then I am not paying attention to the actual conditions of the plants throughout the growing season.  It may be a matter of opinion only as to what is more important.  Yield, dry down, or nutritional value.

The other question I am sure that is bugging some readers here is why bother with 35# of beans that you can buy?  I checked Azure Standard and I can purchase 25# of organic pinto beans for $22.00.  But, that is the slippery slope of only counting the end price at the store.  My beans at a farmers market may be worth $5.00 a pound, or if I had a CSA they could be metered out for winter shares, or in a farm/restaurant setting they would be part of a value added menu item.  The costs of working off the farm are high too, by the time I went to work, to earn the money to buy the beans from Azure, I think the expenses including taxes, time, etc., would be the same.  For me, I would rather stay home and earn non taxed “wages”.   

I won’t lump my produce in with Azure Farms commodity organic fare.  They use lots of off-farm inputs to bring their crops to the warehouse – they are certified organic, and doing a great job, but while their farm is only 75 miles from my house, the food miles add up to much more than that, if you take into consideration all the inputs, large equipment etc.  If I can grow my own beans, with a hoe, wheelbarrow and a few recycled feed bags, I should leave those beans at Azure for someone else who can’t.   

Kitchen sink chili

windfall

I want to set a goal for finishing my canning/preserving activities for December 1st.  Apples I had expected to pick and keep to eat “fresh”, suffered through a wind storm and became windfalls overnight.  So plans change.  Sigh.  Chunky applesauce they will be.  I still need to process my naked seed pumpkins, so maybe I will make my pumpkin pickles.  And my Harsch pickling crock is crying out for sauerkraut – even though I have been thinking lately, that crock looks pretty good stored in its box, and the cabbage is looking pretty good in the garden.  And not really on the preserving front, I am thinking of going AMA (against milking advice) and drying Della off.  Lots of milk in the freezer, but not long enough to last for her dry time.  But, I have milked her too long, and I need to quit for her and her baby’s sake.  I will miss milking – not too sure how she feels ’bout that though… .

I guess I am dying a slow death by canning, now the latest thing to fear is BPA in canning lids!  And if you look closely my apples are touching an aluminum colander, and probably because my dogs stick to us like glue, I have canned numerous dog hairs that I haven’t even seen.  Would that be denatured protein, pressure cooked dog hair?  We live in a modern world and its full of contaminants.  I don’t really see anyway to avoid many of them.  I, frankly am tired of being constantly bombarded by fear mongers.  The media (all types) constantly is warning of this and that.  Probably if you live in a new airtight house, and drive a new car that has lots of plastic in it, and have a cell phone or ipod at your disposal, you’re being exposed to lots of toxins.  So, since I live in an old house that can breath, drive an old rig, don’t own a cell phone or ipod, maybe I can cash in my credits and still do some home canning.  I will not run into the other ditch and buy all new Weck jars – what’s in the gaskets?  Probably not real rubber anymore, but something that no doubt could harm you, if you’re not careful. 

When I think of the things I do everyday that could be dangerous, if I worried about them, I wouldn’t do anything.  Della could go off the deep end and gore me, or kick me in the face.  Then I would have to come in and do different spread sheet and figure out just how much that raw milk is costing me.  Not to mention I would have to hire a relief milker to milk while I was convalescing.    The guy sighting in his high power rifle on our trees, could decide to not back down and leave when I bitch him out asked him to.  But I still have to tell him to leave, because if I let him keep pumping lead in the trees, it could leach and travel a mile to the creek, that then would go 3 more miles and fall over a water fall while a tourist  communed with nature and littered at the same time.  Then I would be liable for lead poisoning of the prolific, but fragile Swinus americanus. 

So I proceed with caution every day.  I eat mincemeat out of the jar that was not cooked to death, but still canned against (which BTW tested low acid enough for water bath) the governments advice.  I still will feed my cows sometimes by putting my pickup in gear, get out and let the pickup drive itself while I get in the back with a weapon (pocketknife) and cut twine (dipped in rodenticide) from the bales, and meter out the hay.  I will play with matches now until May most every day and eat vegetables straight from the garden.  I won’t wash my hen eggs.  I will probably conduct science experiments with bad things like lye and fat.  I may be stupid enough to grab the cast iron pan without a potholder, and will burn my hand rather than drop my precious lid.  And if that isn’t enough I will most likely be eating eggs everyday fried in butter!  And it is a wonderful, unsafe life!!

Cranberry walnut sweet rolls

Are you on the roll call to bring rolls to the holiday dinner?  Maybe this recipe will help.  Use one recipe and make savory rolls for dinner, and sweet rolls for the morning after. 

I’m posting the recipe and method over at Simple-Green-Frugal Co-op today

Pesto and pumpkin seed savory rolls

I would be rich if I had a dime for every time someone has asked me why we grow most of our own food.  Usually the reasoning is that you can earn money and just buy your food at the store.  We try to explain why we believe the food we grow and eat is better for us and the land, or that it doesn’t compare with store fare.  One glance at the orange egg yolks would show the difference. 

The next part of the debate is the inconvenience of having to grow your food and then do something with it – like cook it and eat it.  It’s hardly inconvenient to have a fresh or local ingredients on hand to cook almost anything.  Or to go dig carrots for a snack mid-day.  For me it would be inconvenient to go to work to earn the money to take to the store and buy food.  And frankly, I don’t think I could make enough money to afford what we grow here.  The disconnect between me and questioners is that I see a huge difference between my golden, grass-fed butter in the freezer and what is available.  They do not.  They assume my butter is only worth $2.50 a pound – I would venture if you could even find true grass-fed butter it would more than likely cost about $12.00 per pound. 

Food for too long has been on the back burner, so to speak.  It is hard to explain that, yes, we like being entertained counting pollinators on the parsnips, instead of going to the latest event in town.  Trust me there is no instant gratification in going from seed to table.  Change that to seed to seed and we’re looking at 18 months.  The same argument comes into play here too, why spend anytime growing seed, just buy it.  Sure, I know it doesn’t pencil out to spend 18 months dealing with these parsnips just to get a jar of seed for the next year. But every time we let someone else do something for us we lose a little.   

Truly, are people really that surprised when they see movies like Food, Inc?  What do they expect?  When you give control to someone else for something that should be very important to you – you can expect said person, company, fill in the blank, to do things differently than you would.  And since food and farmers have taken a backseat in modern times, here we are.  Food needs to become important again.  And I mean good, clean food.  Not Wal-Mart organics.  We have become a nation of specialists.  Most farmers grow one or two types of products – they do not grow their own food.  I know it’s the old joke about the plumber whose pipes leak, but really, it isn’t very economically viable to put all your eggs in one basket.  A crop failure or surplus and you may be wiped out.  Several friends have expressed dismay at the current shortage of pumpkin pie filling.  On one hand it was a rude awakening for them to realize that the pumpkin pie filling they purchased this summer for cheesecake was last years pumpkin, and also that they have to have pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner!  So I guess as consumers, we have a long way to go… .

And even if you do decide to eschew the big box store, and buy at the farmers market, you will still have to do a fair amount of homework to learn what practices you deem the most important in the growing of your food.   What is more important to you, fresh, local, organic, humane…the list goes on and on.  To some, chemical farming does not matter, if the product is fresh.  However, if you have cancer in your family, it might pay to look at what the risks are.  Maybe that organic produce at Wal-mart whose origin is dubious may not be such a good buy, seeking out a local organic farm may be better. 

By making food just fuel we have lessened food’s importance to us.  Why bother learning how it is grown?  It will always be one trip to the store away.  But the store is like the freeway – as long as everyone stays in their lane, does their part and behaves, the freeway is great.  But, one little blip, and the freeway becomes a disaster.  Our present subsidized food system isn’t far from that.

Growing our food takes a lot of my time.  It is in fact more than a full-time job.  I can’t think of one thing we do that isn’t really involved in our own foodweb.  If we cut wood, it is to keep us warm, but we also cook with wood 8 months of the year, and the ashes go on the garden or in the orchard to replace what we have taken.  Unrelated things are still connected if we choose to see the connection. 

The other day as I was working over the last of the dry beans – my daughter took a break from her school work, chatted awhile and then fell asleep in the sun.  Despite the bean rustling, and the dogs chasing the cats, she got a few winks in.  It reminded me of sleeping on gunny sacks while my gardening mentors (babysitters) chopped hay with the hammermill.  They lived a subsistence life, and every bit of their hay was used.  By chopping it, and sacking it, they could feed it out to their sheep flock with minimal waste.  Some of farming and gardening is by osmosis, I was too little to help chop that hay, but it was a winter time chore that was done periodically.  I always felt cosy, and safe on my gunny sack perch, despite the noise and dust.  It’s hard to put into words the feeling that providing for a “flock” gives you, even if you are just observing .  But it is real and rewarding, and it is what we give up when relegate our food to a mere commodity.

parsnips for next year - the cycle continues.

It’s been a great wild mushroom year already.  We have eaten our fill and carefully tucked some away in the freezer for the winter.  So I was pleasantly surprised to see these the other day when I went to do the daily paddock shift for the cows. 

A new flush of mushrooms means all best laid plans are off.  The apples that were waiting while I worked on the beans, are still waiting.  A day in the forest hunting mushrooms is more fun than canning applesauce anyway.  

Luckily I had chili on the back of the cookstove, so no meal worries.  

And to ease my guilt about the apples, I made a rustic apple pie - peels, blemishes and all!

So now in addition to the windfall apples that I do need to process, I have lots more Chanterelle mushrooms too.   We do eat well, I can say that much!

I’m still not done with those darn “dry” beans!  Sunny days are a precious commodity this time of year.  And as usual 10 things need doing right now – but everyone including me has been getting tired of skirting this hill of beans.  It rained so much that the pods on these plants that were dry, were starting to draw dampness with all the rain we have been having. So I had to move them to a sunnier spot and then cover the pile each night.  I did manage to get them dry again.  And bad thoughts of throwing the whole mess in the shed for bedding were starting to cross my mind.  So yesterday, when the weatherman was wrong, and it did not look like rain to me, I set about the chore of consolidating this pile into something more manageable. 

Having the right attitude about a large, tedious job helps it go a little better…but that wheel barrow looked pretty empty and the pile of beans looked huge.  It gave me the same feeling of pulling into the hayfield and looking at all the hay that needs raking or all the hay bales that need picking up.  Getting started is the hardest part, and after that it seems to just go along at a good pace.

My plan was to strip the pods into the food wheelbarrow and put the stems in the manure wheelbarrow to make cleanup easier.

Starting to make some headway.

Finally.  One wheelbarrow of pods, and 5 wheelbarrow loads of stems for bedding.  The bean pods still need more drying before I can thresh them.  To do this I have to bring them in the house, so this all fit in three 50 lb. mesh onion bags (the beans don’t weigh that much though) that I can hang until the pods are fully dry.  The mesh bags will allow for good ventilation so I can finally finish this job.  I am curious to see what my total yield will be.

These were in the bottom of the wheelbarrow – chili is on the menu!

Now is the time to start planning next year’s winter garden.  We will harvest throughout the winter from crops that were started as early as February.  Most of our winter veggies are planted by mid – July at the latest.  So in order to do that, I need to make my garden plans now to allow for planting my winter foraging crops alongside my summer crops.  Maybe the hardest part to think about concerning winter gardening is that you will be harvesting your crops – not watching them grow.  Some greens will grow slowly if planted late, but for optimum nutrition and plant hardiness, most vegetables should be mature by the time the short days of September arrive.

Root crops are the most common.  Beets, carrots, parsnips, rutabagas, kohlrabi, and celeriac are our mainstays for winter fare.  All of these are good candidates for leaving in the soil where they grew and mulching, allowing you to harvest as needed.  Celeriac is especially useful, if properly mulched, the tops also survive through the winter and provide celery flavor for soups and stuffings.  These are all candidates for the root cellar too if you are so inclined.

Another mainstay in our winter garden is Kale.  One of the most cold hardy plants we grow, and oh, so productive.  We can eat it all winter and it provides plenty of greens for the hens too.  It tolerates repeated freezing and thawing, and survives the winter only to put on large amounts of  tender flower stalks or rapini for that first taste of spring broccoli.    It is best for the plant to not totally pick all the leaves if you want the plant to survive the winter.  Leave some leaves for protection from the inclement weather.  Better to plant several plants and harvest a little bit from each for your meals.  I start my winter kale in June, for July transplanting and we don’t start harvesting until the cool weather hits.  Like many fall and winter crops, cooler temperatures enhances the flavor of kale.  And geez, the shapes and colors of the different varieties are fascinating – kale fits the ornamental bill too!

Two things to remember about winter harvesting,  and the sun is involved.  If your kale or other greens are frosted like these kales shown above – wait until the frost or ice is gone to harvest.  If you harvest when the leaves are frozen you will end up with mush.  In the winter, plants also concentrate nitrates in their leaves on cloudy days, so if you can time your harvests for sunny periods that is much better.

Another overlooked vegetable is over-wintering cabbages.  This is January King, started in June, transplanted in July, it will mature between December and March.  I have grown this for years and find it to be trouble-free, and very tasty.  Another contender that has a long growing season is over-wintering cauliflower.  Planting a few of these types of plants can provide a fresh vegetable in the lean months of April, when the new garden is just getting started.

Pore over seed catalogs and look for varieties that are cold hardy, and have long growing seasons.  As a general rule, we have an overlap of varieties in our garden, the beets I grow for summer eating are different from the variety I over-winter, and the same goes for carrots.  Don’t be afraid to experiment and try different varieties and different seasons.  Kale in July and August is not something I would choose to eat, but in October what a difference, after a few light frosts, sweet and delicious!

Bring on the seed catalogs!!

The jury is still out on the naked seed pumpkin in our garden.  The idea of seeds you can just eat straight out of the pumpkin without shelling is intriguing, and I had grown Snack Jack before.  But, with all the harvesting and preserving projects each fall, adding one more job that needed attention at that busy time always got me in trouble.    The chickens got to dine on a lot of Snack Jacks – they liked it, but it stuck in my craw that I was wasting these seeds.  I just couldn’t get them processed before they started to go bad.

This year I decided to try hull-less pumpkins again.  Naked seed pumpkins originated in Austria, where they are grown for the highly nutritious oil seeds.  After roasting, the seeds are pressed into pumpkin seed oil, replacing imported olive oil in those regions. 

The flesh is so-so, typical C. pepo fare, not near as flavorful as C. maxima or moschata winter squash varieties.  In fact, the seed catalog recommends that the flesh is best for livestock consumption. 

The Styrian pumpkins loved our conditions and jumped out of the their hills and continued to grow vigorously.  I had problems this year with cucurbit pollination during several different 10o°F + heat waves.  So they may have been more productive barring those episodes.

Inside, just like any other pumpkin – only the seeds are hull-less.

Removing the seeds is a messy, slimy job.  I found the easiest method was to just use my fingers as a comb, and pull the seeds out that way.  That approach left me only with hands to wash and not spoons and extra dishes.   I only had a few strings to remove.  

A platter full of seeds needing to be dried.  Yum!

I usually do a mental check list to help me determine if I will grow a variety again. 

Advantages:
♥  The hull-less seeds are definitely a plus.

♥  I could make my pumpkin pickles out of these, since they are actually pumpkins and have the stringy flesh that gives me the texture I want for my pumpkin pickles.  I don’t usually grow pumpkins, having passed the carving stage.  And my Sweet Meat squash has a perfect texture for pumpkin pies, so pumpkins have been off my list.  I also don’t buy pumpkins because cucurbits are notorious for uptake of toxic agricultural chemicals that have been in farm soil for many decades.  Finding a grower of truly organic pumpkins isn’t easy.  Many organic farms still have these chemicals present, and a strict rotation must be followed.  If I want pumpkins (or any cucurbits) I need to grow them myself.

♥  They are easy to grow and isolate for seed saving, only crossing with summer squash in my garden, which I can tuck in anywhere and preserve my isolation distances.

Disadvantages:

♣  Pumpkins don’t keep as long as winter squash, requiring processing fairly soon after harvest during the busy season, in order to salvage the seeds for eating or saving.  Winter squash will keep much longer and spread out the workload.
I still have 2 Sweet Meat squash from ‘08, I won’t eat them, but I do want to see how long they will keep.

♣  They take up quite a bit of space in the garden, small gardeners might not find them productive enough.

♣  For me using the flesh as livestock feed in counter-productive.  As I still have grazing at the time of year the pumpkins are needing to be fed out, it is just too much work.  Sheep, poultry or pigs would be the easiest to feed these pumpkins to, requiring no chopping before feeding.  Cows could choke.  Dogs would also be a good choice too, because my dogs absolutely love squash.  But again, to keep C. pepo’s you need to process them in some way.

As you can see I am about evenly divided on the pro’s and con’s.  I most likely will grow them again because the seeds are delicious, but our winter squash fits our low energy storage requirements, and productivity needs much better.  But all in all, I think maybe for a gardener with limited space, this Styrian pumpkin may be a better fit than the standard orange jack-o-lantern type.  A little more than decoration, and easy to grow too!

Popping garlic for next years crop.

It’s that time year, time to plant garlic and time to start bedding animals during the winter months.  What do garlic beds and cattle beds have in common?  I am posting about that symbiotic relationship over at Simple-Green- Frugal Co-op today.  Stop on by.

I won’t mince my words, I think mincemeat  should contain meat, or it should be called something else.  Much like the famous turkey made out of tofu or soy hotdogs.  What’s up with that?  If you don’t want to eat meat, don’t.  Just eat the tofu if that is what you want, you’re not honoring a turkey, soybeans or tradition by over-processing foodstuffs into meat shapes.  End of rant, maybe.

Preserving meat like this is unnecessary these days with freezers in almost every household.  But sometimes preserving tradition can be just as important, otherwise we may lose our way and our connections to the past.  The funny thing about this post, is that I was just going to post my recipe, some photos, and tell a funny story about Hangdog and mincemeat pie.  But, as I started the prep work I started thinking about how people eat too much dessert and sweets these days, dessert should be an occasional treat, not everyday fare after meals.  A dessert such as this should be reserved for special meals.

The other thing that struck me was that mincemeat is something you either really like, or strongly dislike.  And for most people, the meat and fat are the culprits, hence the now common mince made with only the fruit component, and oh yeah, here we go again, vegetable suet??   What would Weston Price think?

And one more thing I realized as I was gathering my ingredients, I realized the “bad” fixings that make up the bulk of my recipe have traveled zero miles, and the more PC components like raisins, sugars and spices have traveled the most.  So for most people making PC mincemeat, unless you live where there is abundant cane for sugar and grapes for raisin production, the typical homemade or purchased mincemeat does not qualify.

Mincemeat is very rich, best eaten in small quantities, and it’s keeping qualities as a preserve are unexcelled, so I do not make mincemeat every year.  Our family tradition of mincemeat started with me, I begged for the recipe from our neighbor.  Every year we celebrated Thanksgiving at our neighbor’s, and they celebrated Christmas with us, and they always brought the mincemeat pies.  Anytime I get a whiff of mincemeat, I think back to huge holiday dinners, prepared on their cookstove, and all of us crammed into their tiny dining room sharing a home cooked meal and good community. 

After my neighbor was widowed, she moved back to Northern Idaho, to stay near her children.  She was happy to pass on her recipe to me – to her it was common fare from her days as logging camp cook, making do with venison and cooking up the delicious neck roasts to combine with raisins and abundant fall apples in order make a storable preserve in the days before refrigeration was common.  I am sure the hardworking loggers were enamored with the culinary skills she wrought on the deer brought back to the camp kitchen.

She was quite a gal – here is newspaper clipping that I keep with her recipe and the accompanying letter.  Dated December 30, 1971, she is showing off her prize winning crocheted tablecloth.  Made in one piece, she had garnered the top prize in the National Grange Needlework Contest.  For her 1000 hours of work, she received $1,160.00.  That was a lot of money at that time, and she was the second woman in our Grange to win the contest, a friend had won it the previous year.  It was a big deal to me, I was 14, she was 81, and she was quite the role model for me.  I never could understand though why she insisted on wearing a dress, even to chop wood!  But if wearing a dress equates with crochet skills, I know why I am not good at crocheting   
 
OK, Memory Lane is closed…

On to the ingredients, and the methods.  Besides carrying on tradition by continuing to make this mincemeat, I believe good food starts with good ingredients.  The more local, the better.  And the correct ingredients have a huge impact on flavor too.  I was appalled to read in the Ball Blue Book of Preserving, a mincemeat recipe that called for ground beef.  The dumbing down continues –  a word here, then a long forgotten tool, and what used to be roast beef, chopped or ground coarse with a meat chopper, now is simplified down to ground beef.  Most cooks know that texture is all important in food.  Ground beef as we know it these days is hamburger, and does not have the texture or mouthfeel you want in a sweet pie.  Or least not what I would be expecting anyway. 

The next part may be offal, and in fact it should be if I am going to walk my talk.  I’ll just run through the mincemeat ingredients that were supplied from our farm.  I won’t elaborate about the raisins, and sugar. 

Beautiful leaf fat, the best for making suet.  The term suet these days just means animal fat to most people.  But this is the best for cooking, and is hard to find, unless you have the animal processed right in front of your nose.  I removed the kidneys and froze the leaf fat for later use.

The next main ingredient is the beef roast.

Mabel specified neck roast from beef or venison, cooked and seasoned as for table use.  The neck meat is very flavorful. 

I browned the roast in homemade butter.  Grassfed sure makes a difference doesn’t it?
Seasoned liberally with salt and pepper.

Then pressured cooked the roast for about 45 minutes.  Delicious.

While the roast was cooking, I prepared the suet.
Cut the suet in small pieces so you can put it through your Universal #2 food chopper

I used the fine cutter for the suet.

Two cups suet. 

We like the meat chopped, and in recognizable pieces.  However, this part is subjective, you can chop the meat with a meat chopper like I used for the suet.  Try the different cutters to see which consistency suits what is your idea of meat in mincemeat.

Of, course, this project is of great interest to the helpers.


The spices are subjective too.  I used cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, cloves, ginger, and black pepper.

My recipe calls for King apples, but they are a common Northwest heirloom, maybe not available in other areas.  Any tart cooking apple will do.

Combine all ingredients.

Mix well, and simmer for an hour until apples are tender.

The finished product to be tucked away for the flavors to meld until the holidays.

I understand the yuck factor about mincemeat, I have heard all the jokes, as if we have progressed beyond this type of fare.  But for me it represents fond memories of childhood holiday meals, my bell steer Brooks, the scent of Della’s flank as I milked, gazing out the kitchen window as I churned the butter, or peeled the King apples.  Truly, time in a bottle.

Since this post is outside the box for many, I have linked to Food Renegade’s Fight Back Friday post for this week.